What You Come Home To

my front door

Ah, the realization of a dream. That's excellent Allison. Since you couldn't be a singing dentist (this was her childhood aspiration people, for real) you can at least eat at Benihana.

Lately I've also been thinking about the realization of a dream. Home with a capitol H has been on my mind a lot. I felt at home at the ranch, more at home than any other place that wasn't actually mine. I think a big part of this was that it was a place that was entrusted to me, I was told it was a place that meant a lot to Pam and to the other creatures who live there and was asked to care for it. We all know that I am no great housekeeper, and I think Pam would say lots of nice things about me, but none of them would be "I have never seen my place that clean!" and that's fine. But the truth is that I did take better care of that place than I take of my own.

I like to blame this on being out all the time, on having too many other more fun things to do than clean, and I do think this is the philosophy we were raised with, don't you? But while I was away, I missed my place even more than I missed being out and about in Seattle. I missed my view (the Queen's View, don't you know?) and all the things I've collected over the past 20 years. I missed just being at Home. Your home should be, I think, like your wedding, a place where you can look around and say "All of this is here because of me, all of this is for me!". At your wedding, the important part was the people, and you had a Hogwarts Hall full of people who were all there for you, together for the first time in your life, and maybe the only time, which is part of what made it so special. At home, I look around and the "all of this is here for me!" statement is about my possessions. We all know that things should not be as important to us as people are, but possessions, the way you and I do possessions, are all about dreams, whether it's a dream of some day knitting socks for every single person I love, the dream of the perfect Audrey Hepburn outfit, or of long letters written by hand on creamy paper, or dreams that have already come true and are now memories, like the Polaroid Wall with it's dreams of birthdays and bartenders, babies and tender brutes. Full of all these things, my apartment is both the container for the dream, and evidence of many many dreams realized.

I have only four days of work left, and then after a quick long weekend at the beach, it's just me at home. I've already got so many field trips in mind, ferry rides and oysters and movies in the middle of the day. But my favorite dream for this time off is that I will spend some time taking care of this little apartment as though it were a place that's special to someone else. After a while, maybe I'll be able to let myself in on the secret that that someone else is me.